SAVE THE CR100

Losing our two CR100s will be the most devastating thing to happen to our household.

My ONE YEAR OLD can play his favourite music by just pushing the button over and over again. My 7 year old will now PESTER ME CONSTANTLY to use my phone whenever he wants to listen to Harry Potter (which is ALL THE TIME)

My parents in law - NEITHER OF WHOM OWN SMARTPHONES will now have to go downstairs and switch on their PC in order to listen to the audiobooks and radio programmes I've given them. They don't use all these 'services', but Sonos is amazing so we built it for them, at great cost for the convenience of having the controller.

My wife won't be able to roll over in bed and hit the volume without blinding us all with your WHITE app in the middle of the night (swipe tap tap tap vs reach and push a button?????)

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON'T DO THIS SONOS!!!!!

My Children and in-laws are going to HATE me for this.

DO NOT criticise our choices not to use smartphones, or Alexa, or Spotify. Why should we buy new things to make your system work?

PLEASE don't take away the ability to connect we are happy with basic controls?

What am I going to do now? Tell me WHAT?

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Best answer by Ryan S 2 February 2018, 19:08

Hi everyone, thanks for voicing your concerns here. We’re going to keep this as the main thread for this conversation so it’s all in one place. All the threads have been merged here, so my apologies if there are any conversations that had the flow messed up.

I want to provide more detail about exactly what will happen in the coming months and why. In early April, we will release a software upgrade that will no longer support the aging CR100. Here are your options:

Accept the upgrade, understanding that your CR100 will no longer connect. This is our strong recommendation for two reasons: 1) due the age of the battery in the controller, it has the potential to overheat when left charging for extended periods of time 2) you will continue to receive the latest features, bug fixes, and security updates. This is a far better solution for safety and performance reasons, but we realize you’ll need to transition to a new controller. We have resources available to help you get set-up on an alternate controller and are offering a coupon code to sonos.com to help make the transition easier (amount varies regionally, one per household).

Ignore future upgrades, leaving your Sonos system on its current version. We do not recommend this option. If you do go this route, you are acknowledging the risk of the aging lithium ion battery in your controller. Additionally, opting not to update means you will not receive any new features or future security patches for your entire system – not just the CR100. For example, being on an unsupported version means that you might lose connectivity to music services, as is already the case for Google Play Music on the CR100. It is necessary to configure your system in advance to avoid future updates. Any update applied to the firmware and/or to the app, even unintentionally, is irreversible.

Please reach out to discuss your specific situation and solutions with one of our team members, or if you’d like to better understand how to get set-up on an alternate controller. You can contact us directly at https://sonos.com/contact.

The CR100 can be disposed of at any local e-waste processing center in accordance with all local laws and regulations. To claim your coupon code or if you’d like a hand disposing of your CR100, please see here: https://www.sonos.com/cr100submit.

Updated March 23rd:
We appreciate the concern and your love of the CR100, and the team has been listening to your feedback here. We’ve tried to keep our reasons for making this decision clear.

The CR100 is a unique Sonos product as it has an internal lithium ion battery, which was never intended or recommended to be replaceable. Additionally, the hardware of the CR100 has aged. As you know, it already can’t keep up with new features. For these reasons, the best course of action for CR100s is to safely dispose of them.

We strive to keep products working with core functionality for as long as possible and we’ve worked to keep the hardware running for almost a decade since it was last available for sale. We have no plans to disconnect any of our legacy players, although in the future they may not get some new features that become available on newer Sonos products.

We always encourage Sonos owners to stay up-to-date with software upgrades, but ultimately this choice is yours. If you do choose to take steps to ignore future software upgrades, skipping the update in April that will disconnect the CR100 from your system, you will no longer be able to add speakers, and you will not receive new features or security patches. Additionally, opting not to update means you are acknowledging the risk of the aging lithium ion battery in your controller. Whichever you choose, we’re here to help and answer questions.
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3040 replies

I'm not entirely sure what point your making... - "don't need a CR100 to manage a local library"... - what's the relevance here? - what I'm questioning is the sagacity of relying on an "uninvested" 3rd party (in this case Amazon, but the principal applies to other scenarios) as a control mechanism for one or more of our "systems" - in this case sonos, but again the principal applies generally...

I assumed your argument about 3rd party control included 3rd party sources of audio. And really, it should. In both cases, your system would not function if the 3rd party suddenly became unavailable for whatever reason. The odds of Alexa going away are probably around the same as Amazon music services going away. Whether that be permanent or temporary loss of service.

Paul Gordon wrote:

I'm not "making an argument" for or against anything (at least I don't intend to be) - as I stated in the above paragraph, I'm suggesting that the recent outage should at least give pause for thought about how wise it is to introduce that dependency, - even if it is only a partial dependency, since as was correctly stated, when Amazon has an outage & Alexa control is unavailable, there is of course still the option to use the app... I never suggested otherwise.

Your statement above is what's generally thought of as 'making an argument'. Rewording it as 'suggesting', does change what it is. Regardless, the argument/suggestion doesn't make sense. No one is fully dependent on Alexa for control as it's not even possible with Sonos. You can't setup Sonos without using the app. You can use voice control for some features if you wish, but there will always be the app to control the system as a backup. That's not dependency or even partial dependency. Yes, you acknowledged that the app is always an option, but the negates the possibility that anyone is dependent on voice control.

Paul Gordon wrote:

However, that said, if you look back through the myriad posts so far, there are more than a few where individuals have offered up Alexa control as the solution to pretty much every scenario contrived by anyone lamenting the loss of utility caused by no more CR100 control option... some posts give the impression that the poster's opinion is that Alexa control is (or is going to be) the be all & end all of Sonos control options.

And for some people it will. And again, there is the app for when it doesn't. For the cases when voice control isn't available, it is the backup option.

Paul Gordon wrote:

Some people hate the app with a passion... I'm not quite in that camp, although about this time last year when there was a big app overhaul, I definitely hated what they did with it the first time I picked up my iPad after that update... I stared at the UI for some considerable time before I could even figure out WTF was going on and where the various elements were, I took quite some time to adjust to the new UX, during which time I cussed & cursed & generally took 5 times longer to accomplish any given Sonos control task than I had before that update. Even today, I still think it's a huge backward step compared to the "old" app..

Other apps are available of course... (I have switched to SonoPhone/SonoPad)

ok.

Paul Gordon wrote:

I think you're perhaps running away with the comparison a tad... I'm not talking about internet outages (pretty rare for me I'm happy to say), and certainly not natural disasters like hurricanes (even more rare for me). Of course those are more important than audio control, - that goes without saying... - which is why i didn't say it... :-)

Your point was that voice control isn't going to be 100% available. My counter point was...so what. It's currently way more reliable than other services Sonos depends on, like an interent connection and power. Yes, it's possible that Alexa control could disappear one day. That doesn't mean that Sonos needs to have their own controller in order to be prepared for that highly unlikely scenario, especially when the app is already a backup.

Paul Gordon wrote:

We all know that Amazon & Alexa more or less own the smart voice assistant market at the moment.... things can change... For as long as it suits Amazon to be the leader in this space, then I imagine it's pretty unlikely they'll go away any time soon. But make no mistake, Amazon are in this space because it suits their business model; to sell more amazon products & services.. if at any time in the future the world changes and it no longer suits them, who can say with sincerity that they think Amazon will continue providing the back end services required to support Alexa "out of the goodness of their hearts"?At any time of their choosing, Amazon could decide to either start charging for the service, or to discontinue it entirely, thereby leaving 3rd parties who've bet their shirt on Alexa integration up sh*t creek without a paddle...

Yes they could. And Amazon would suffer a lot of backlash if they made such a decision. Likely receiving a ton of boycotts and such, losing a lot of business to Google and other competitors. But yes, it's in the realm of possibility. Still doesn't mean Sonos needs to have their own controller to be prepared for that end of the world type scenario.

Paul Gordon wrote:

Sensibly, Sonos have said they plan to be voice assistant agnostic, and will work with other services (AFAIK, only Google has been mooted thus far) - but that's not here yet (is it?). And of course the same caveat applies to A. N. Other voice assistant as it does to Alexa... - these companies aren't doing it "for us"...

None of the voice assistant services are "invested" in the products & companies that use them, by which I mean if Sonos went away tomorrow, do Amazon care? - do Amazon lose out in any way? - is the same true of the reverse situation?

Amazon wouldn't suffer much from Sonos going away, true. However, if they decided to pull support for Sonos speakers, they again get a backlash from customers. They aren't doing it for us, but they definitely need loyal customers in order to continue doing business.

Paul Gordon wrote:

Don't take this as me suggesting that Amazon, or Google, or anyone else providing a smart assistant platform are going to disappear any time soon, but to imagine that it could never happen is at best overoptimistic... - I remember a time when Novell appeared unassailable in the Network OS marketplace, and at the time it was "unthinkable" that it wouldn't always be so... - I'll wager there are people reading this now thinking "who the hell are Novell?"...

Of course it is the final solution forever and ever, amen. No product or service ever is. CDs were a great solution, for their time, and I don't regret investing time and money into them. That doesn't mean I'm going to stick with using CDs forever. Likewise, I'm not going to regret investing in Sonos just because one day, there is a better solution that comes along. Sure, I want Sonos to last a good long time, and it's a good bet that it will.

Paul Gordon wrote:

And even if one were to dismiss the suggestion that the services that Sonos et al rely upon for voice control might disappear, as wildly fanciful, there is still the potential for temporary service disruptions, which in the case of Amazon I believe has occurred a few times, - if memory serves, I think probably twice in the last year, the latest being just the other day. My point of caution is that we cannot possibly predict, mitigate against, or in any way prevent more such occurrences, and neither can Sonos... - they have no control over, nor influence upon the reliability of a service that their products are offering as a central feature...

That's all..

Unless you're making a music player that doesn't require power, maybe has a hand crank on it, you're going to rely on 3rd party power services for your product to work. You aren't going to get 100% uptime. If that's not acceptable you shouldn't buy electronics at all. Same goes for using voice control services. If you must have 100% uptime, don't use it.

Sigh... it seems we've reached the point now where even thoughtful, polite, considered commentary on an aspect that is relevant to the general bearing of the discussion is thoughtlessly dismissed and insulted. I think I really have had enough of this. I'm going back to sitting in the hot sun, with a cold beer in one hand and a CR100 in the other to chill out with some tunes.

I've done the same thing often, just replaced the CR100 with my phone or a echo dot w/battery pack on the table next to me.

Seriously though, I've respond to your suggestions. I just don't think they hold much weight.

I just ordered a new battery for my CR100 remote and installed it. Then I was very happy that the controller worked again!
Installed the update it was bugging me about and then found out it was all a waste of time and money!
So disappointed!!

So is this the thread to save the PLAY3 too? Am in the right place?
Can any one tell me how long I have until SONOS bricks my PLAY3??? I already have two CR100s that are in my museum glass show case just can bring my self to let them go. ... Hmmm Bluesound is looking better and better.

So is this the thread to save the PLAY3 too? Am in the right place? Can any one tell me how long I have until SONOS bricks my PLAY3??? I already have two CR100s that are in my museum glass show case just can bring my self to let them go. ... Hmmm Bluesound is looking better and better.

I'll tell you when Sonos is up to brick my two Play:5s, 1st Gen. You can then estimate how long till the time's up for your Play:3s, presuming, they are still in working condition by that time.

»And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space, Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.« (›Windmills Of Your Mind‹ [1967]. Music by Michel Legrand ; English lyrics written by Alan & Marilyn Bergman)

So is this the thread to save the PLAY3 too? Am in the right place? Can any one tell me how long I have until SONOS bricks my PLAY3??? I already have two CR100s that are in my museum glass show case just can bring my self to let them go. ... Hmmm Bluesound is looking better and better.

Your frustration over the CR100 is understandable, but your conclusion that it means that your PLAY:3 will be disabled any time soon is not rational. It hasn't even been removed from the website yet and is still available for retail in places. Even if you were assume the PLAY:3 will follow the same path as the CR100, maybe even sped up due to recent IPO, that still would mean the PLAY:3 would have many years left.

melvimbe wrote:
Your frustration over the CR100 is understandable, but your conclusion that it means that your PLAY:3 will be disabled any time soon is not rational. It hasn't even been removed from the website yet and is still available for retail in places. Even if you were assume the PLAY:3 will follow the same path as the CR100, maybe even sped up due to recent IPO, that still would mean the PLAY:3 would have many years left.[/quote]\

Spoiler alert: Just got the Email this week directly from SONOS themselves stating they will cease production of the PLAY3

An Important Update on Play:3
Play:3 End of Sale.
The Play:3 has been a valuable part of our line-up and will continue to bring music to homes for years to come. But, as we’ve introduced new listening experiences to the Sonos Home Sound System, it’s time to bring the sale of the Play:3 to an end.

Spoiler alert: Just got the Email this week directly from SONOS themselves stating they will cease production of the PLAY3

An Important Update on Play:3Play:3 End of Sale.The Play:3 has been a valuable part of our line-up and will continue to bring music to homes for years to come. But, as we’ve introduced new listening experiences to the Sonos Home Sound System, it’s time to bring the sale of the Play:3 to an end.

So you can add the PLAY3 to the list of potential sonos bricks

Guess you missed this part: will continue to bring music to homes for years to come

Perhaps then you would be right, given that belief, to get out of the Sonos ecosystem and switch to Bluesound. Personally I trust Sonos to seek to maximise its profits, which is what I trust every company to do. I don't happen to believe they did anything unethical over the CR100 but I respect your right to think otherwise. It seems to me so unlikely that it will be in Sonos' own commercial interests to 'brick' the Play:3 for the foreseeable future I certainly won't be losing any sleep over it. Although I don't actually own a Play:3....

Edit: just recalled I do own a Play:3, but lent it to a friend. Still not worried.

Perhaps then you would be right, given that belief, to get out of the Sonos ecosystem and switch to Bluesound.

I haven't done a ton of research on this and could be way off, but I don't think Bluesound has been selling products near as long as Sonos has. They don't have the track record. I suppose you can take the attitude that you'd rather go with a company where you don't know the product lifecyle vs a company that you do, but clearly the risk is greater with Bluesound.